Word List
3rd Grade Sight Words
Fry words 201 to 300, sorted for a third grader: 81 follow patterns your child has been taught by the end of second grade, and only 18 have to be learned by heart. If your school uses the Dolch list instead, its third grade words are on the Dolch page.
How many sight words should a third grader know?
No source this site relies on gives a third-grade number. The Common Core standard for third grade (RF.3.3d) asks children to “read grade-appropriate irregularly spelled words” and names no count. What the numbers do say is why these words are worth the time: reading researcher Timothy Shanahan puts the 300 most frequent words at about 75 percent of the words a child sees in any text, and these are words 201 to 300.
Treat this page as the next hundred to work through, not a target your child is behind on. How to teach sight words covers the routine, and sight word games has games built from the heart words.
Which list are these words from?
They are words 201 to 300 on the Fry list, Edward Fry’s ranking of the most common words in English, with one word left off. Fry did not assign grades, so giving the third hundred to third grade is our choice, following the 2nd grade page’s second hundred. Shanahan’s own pace is faster: he suggests all 300 by the end of second grade, so a second grader who reads the first 200 easily can start here.
If your school uses the Dolch list, its third grade level is 41 words, and the Dolch sight words page sorts them the same way: 35 to sound out and 6 heart words, with worksheets for each. Eleven of those 41 are also on this page.
Which of these words can your child sound out?
All but 18 of the 99 follow patterns taught by the end of second grade. That covers every pattern on these lists, so the 81 are reading practice, and the 18 heart words are where the repetition goes.
Which 3rd grade sight words can your child sound out?
All 81 follow patterns taught by the end of second grade, from two vowels that make one sound (tree, food, seem) and a vowel followed by r (start, hard, girl) to a silent e (life, white, face) and longer words read one syllable at a time (be-tween, ex-am-ple, im-por-tant). Treat them as reading practice: sound them out rather than memorizing them.
The sort is by reading, not spelling. A word like close is easy to read and still worth a second look when your child writes it.
- high
- every
- near
- add
- food
- between
- own
- below
- plant
- last
- keep
- tree
- never
- start
- city
- light
- under
- story
- saw
- left
- few
- while
- along
- might
- close
- seem
- next
- hard
- open
- example
- begin
- life
- always
- those
- both
- paper
- together
- got
- often
- run
- important
- until
- children
- side
- feet
- car
- mile
- night
- walk
- white
- sea
- began
- grow
- took
- river
- carry
- state
- book
- hear
- stop
- without
- second
- late
- miss
- idea
- eat
- face
- far
- really
- almost
- let
- girl
- cut
- talk
- soon
- list
- song
- being
- leave
- family
- it's
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Printables for 3rd Grade Sight Words to Sound Out
- 3rd Grade Sight Words to Sound Out: Word Cards (PDF)40 cards · 4 pages
- 3rd Grade Sight Words to Sound Out: Word Scramble (PDF)24 words · answer key included · 6 pages
- 3rd Grade Sight Words to Sound Out: Sentence Completion (PDF)24 sentences · answer key included · 8 pages
- 3rd Grade Sight Words to Sound Out: Word Search (PDF)16 words · answer key included · 2 pages
Which 3rd grade sight words have to be learned by heart?
These 18 are heart words, words that break the usual spelling patterns and need to be learned by heart. Our heart words guide shows which part of each one to learn by heart, and a six-step routine for teaching it.
- country
- school
- father
- earth
- eye
- thought
- head
- don't
- something
- group
- four
- once
- enough
- watch
- above
- sometimes
- mountain
- young
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